Peloton Formations

by Richard Martin
(April 2014 – November 2016)

richardmartinwriter.com
richardmartin@duck.com

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Contents

Preface (3)
Peloton formations (5)
Peloton interview (11)
The baroudeur (18)
The climber (21)
The sprinter (24)
The rouleur (28)
The puncheur (30)
Road captain (33)
Who leads? (36)
The apprentice’s craft (39)
Race day (42)
What counts? (45)
Ready to jump (49)

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 Preface

This is a collection of blog posts, articles and an interview produced between 2014 and
2016.

When I started to explore the topic of peloton formations, I was involved in a change
programme in an organisation that seemed stuck; weighed down by process,
bureaucracy and deference to hierarchy. At the same time, I had joined different
communities and online conversations where the possibility and opportunity for doing
things differently were being discussed on a daily basis.

My interest in road cycling became a lens through which I looked at these alternative
practices but also provided a useful metaphor with which I could translate and
communicate ideas to colleagues.

This is the idea in a nutshell:

The world needs responsive organisations. Companies that are agile and adaptive,
responding to changes in context and circumstances.

In professional cycling, the peloton is uid. It moves towards its destination with
common purpose. Yet roles shift within the peloton as a whole, and within each team,
dependent on terrain, conditions and the individual cyclists themselves.

Each team will have slightly different objectives on each day of racing. This affects the
roles each rider takes on. Sometimes they will lead. On other occasions, they will be in
service of their teammates.

As in a hierarchical company, the roles may largely stay the same, but the riders in the
peloton move uidly from one role to another rather than being constrained by a single
one. They are leaders, followers, technical experts. They are climbers, sprinters, rouleurs,
puncheurs and baroudeurs.

This is network working. Your node lights up and people, energy, ideas and leadership
responsibilities ow to you. Then another node lights up, and you take on a different role
in service of its goals. The network remains a hierarchy, but it is one in a constant state of
ux.

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Preface

The various pieces in this collection walk around the topic, zooming in and out,
unpicking the metaphor and examining the various gures and roles within the peloton.

I owe thanks to Neil Usher, Jon Husband, Stowe Boyd and Haydn Shaughnessy. The
opening ‘Peloton formations’ piece started out as a Pecha Kucha presentation delivered
at Workplace Trends 2014. It was adapted from verse to prose and subsequently
published in Wirearchy: Sketches for the Future of Work in 2015. The
interview was rst published on the Gigaom Research website in July 2014. The
closing article, ‘Ready to jump’, was commissioned by and published on the Hack &
Craft News website in November 2016. Thanks are also due to the many people I
have discussed this topic with over the years.

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As I approached my 40s, I rediscovered a love for cycling. Physical activity and rides
through the Kentish countryside on a new road bike were quickly followed by an
interest in professional road racing. Hours were spent watching the sport, reading about
it in voluminous depth, making my rst visits to classic races like Paris–Roubaix and the
Tour de France. An obsession quickly had established itself. Around the same time I
developed a growing awareness of different approaches to the world of work, different
ideas about how we might organise ourselves, think about leadership and learning, and
the relationship between companies, their partners, suppliers and customers. At some
point the interests began to intertwine.

There are many metaphors in business. Many rely on nature: swarms of insects,
murmurations of starlings, schools of sh, worker ants, termite mounds. As we are
focusing on people, though, I wanted to use a human example. One that also suggested
the communion between us, technology and machine: the cycling peloton. For me, this
is an example of the responsive, adaptive organisation to which many of us aspire. The
peloton is united in common purpose. But there are many different objectives within its
con nes. Some members aim for the overall victory, some for the different jerseys on
offer, some for stage wins on speci c days, some simply for television exposure and
advertising opportunities for their corporate sponsors.

As with a company, its internal operation and its partnership with external organisations,
the peloton is rife with competition, collaboration, cooperation and co-creation. The
competition can be at an individual and a team level, just as a corporation may compete
with other companies as well as internally for people, money, technology and other
resources. On occasion, though, both businesses and members of different cycling teams
will partner to mutual bene t. Within a cycling team itself, all work together for a
common objective. One person crosses the nish line in rst place, but often this is a
team victory rather than an individual one.

This mixture of competition, collaboration and cooperation can be seen in the

breakaways that often form early on during each day of professional cycling races. It is
informed by cooperative effort between team rivals and co-creation as the group pulls
away from the peloton, then works together to stay away. The breakaway competes with
the peloton, trying to remain out of the latter’s reach. Competition within the breakaway

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only resurfaces once the nish line is within its grasp. The breakaway is cycling’s skunk
works. A place of experimentation, frequent failure and constant learning.

Often to be seen in the breakaway is the baroudeur. These are cycling’s change agents,
the non-conformists, who frequently question and challenge the status quo, rattling
cages, ignoring reputations, and stamping their own personalities on the race. A good
example is Thomas Voeckler, loved by the fans for his devil-may-care attitude and on-
the-bike gurning. He has been responsible for animating many races, attacking at will,
trying to shake things up. He is less loved by his colleagues in the peloton, though,
because he constantly leads them to the unknown, challenging and stretching them,
making them suffer as he innovates and animates.

Another personality in the peloton is the sprinter. These are the accomplished PR men,
smooth communicators who understand that it is their jobs to unite their teams in
common purpose. The team’s goal is to enable them to cross the nishing line, arms in
the air, exposing their sponsors’ logos. The sprinters take the plaudits and the glory on
behalf of the team, ensuring that the victory is savoured and shared by all as they greet
their teammates at the nish line.

An ef cient, well-organised but responsive sprint train is like poetry in motion. Each
member of the team puts in their own effort at the front of a line of riders, taking the
wind resistance and providing shelter for their teammates behind them. With 300m to
go the last member peels off, leaving the ground open for their nominated sprinter to
nish the job. This is like agile project delivery, each member of the team knowing
exactly what is expected of them and when, but responding to minor variations around
them.

Sprinters like Marcel Kittel, André Greipel and Mark Cavendish are bene ciaries of the
work of well-practised sprint trains. They are the ones who cross the line with their arms
in the air. But that is the outcome of the high ef ciency and continuous improvement
achieved by their teams. Collectively, their teams are serial winners. They maintain a
high ratio of wins through seeking marginal improvements, and responding to shifting
conditions and context in the peloton. At the 2009 Tour de France, for example,
Cavendish crossed the line in rst place six times. On the nal stage, which nished on
the Champs Élysées in Paris, so effective were the Columbia HTC team that both the
nal lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, and Cavendish were far enough ahead of the eld to

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claim rst and second places in the sprint. As a team, Columbia HTC improved stage
victory by stage victory throughout the Tour.

Teams tend to operate under loose frameworks rather than minutely detailed plans. Any
plan, in this respect, is only ever guidance. The riders on the road have the autonomy to
respond to what they observe around them. Crashes. Poor form. Exceptional form. Shifts
in climactic conditions. This is decision-making at the edges. Responsiveness and uidity
dominate. There was a good example of this in the 3rd stage of the 2009 Tour. Support
staff had driven the stage route earlier in the day, and reported back on spots where
opportunists might want to make a move. Michael Rogers, one of the Columbia HTC
team, recognised that they could attack the peloton as a group on a particularly sharp
bend in the road, which was exposed to a strong cross wind. He called his team
members to take action, and a concerted team effort fragmented the peloton and set up
Cavendish for a sprint victory.

Even long-term goals, like the Great Britain team’s targeting of the 2011 men’s world
road racing championship in Copenhagen (aka Project Rainbow), can only ever be
informed by loose frameworks. Here the goal was to set up a bunch sprint nish, giving
Mark Cavendish a chance, as one of the world’s fastest sprinters, to cross the line rst.
Each member of the team had a loosely de ned role to help accomplish this, but the
freedom to respond to what was happening around them. David Millar was the team
captain on the road, but there were other leaders too, requiring some members of the
team to protect Cavendish during the day, and others to lead and control the peloton.
The goal was accomplished with tactics that were proactive, responsive and uid, as
required. Communication between team members and trust that had been built over a
two-year period of preparation were key factors.

The uidity of roles is hugely important in the peloton. They recall Jon Husband’s
original concept of wirearchy, which highlights a dynamic, two-way ow of power and
authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by
interconnected people and technology. The peloton is a form of network, but even
within the network there is a hierarchy of roles. The difference is that people are not
inseparable from a given role. Indeed, they move uidly between them as context and
circumstance requires. When the road is at, the sprinter leads. When the mountains are
high, the climber comes to the fore. At other times, they follow the lead of colleagues, or
offer their expertise in different areas. The responsive organisation is similar. At any one

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point in time, you can be involved in multiple projects, leading some, following the lead
of others on some, advising yet others.

Humility and self-knowledge are essential for such uidity of roles to be effective. At the
core of the cycling team is a form of servant leadership. Members of the team put
themselves in service of their colleagues. The leader for the day is determined by context
– terrain, weather conditions, form, health, overall objective and day-speci c goals.
Service can take the form of leading from the front, taking the wind, sheltering the
designated protected rider for the day, so that they are in the best condition when the
nal challenge is in reach. The servant leaders attempt to control the peloton too,
selecting who they will allow to get into the day’s breakaway, judging when it is time to
close the gap between the peloton and the day’s escapees.

The 2012 Tour de France offered a great example of servant leadership. Mark Cavendish
was the reigning world champion, wearing the coveted Rainbow bands. He was
recognised as one of the fastest sprinters in the peloton, as well as the most successful
sprinter to have ever participated in the Tour de France since the event began in 1903.
Team Sky’s goal, though, was to win the overall Tour and secure the yellow jersey for
Bradley Wiggins. Cavendish put himself in service of this goal, parking his personal
ambitions. He acted as a super domestique, ferrying water to his colleagues in the team
and leading them up the lower slopes of the big climbs.

When Wiggins’s overall victory looked assured, and the terrain was more suited to the
sprinting maestro, roles were reversed. Wiggins, adorned in the race leader’s yellow
jersey, put himself in service of the day’s objective rather than the overall goal. He
slotted into Cavendish’s sprint train, acting as one of the nal lead-out men. One of the
great images from the 2012 event is of the Tour de France winner leading out his friend
and teammate on the iconic Champs Élysées, setting up yet another victory for the
successful Team Sky.

The climber is another of the peloton’s great characters. This is the individual around
whom myth and fable hang like a cloak. The nicknames acquired by these giants of the
road speak volumes: The Angel of the Mountains, The Eagle of Toledo, Il Campionissimo,
The Cannibal, The Badger, The Pirate. These are cycling’s visionaries. Like some of
business’s great entrepreneurs, they seem to see and reach out for things that many of us
cannot even imagine – until we suddenly nd that we have been led there. Despite their
apparent physical delicacy, the climber is a driven individual, with a strong will and
purpose. When they are good time trialists, as well as outstanding climbers, these are the

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people that the team works for to secure overall victory in the big races. Their role is to
win on behalf of the team, often leaping away from the comfort of their companions as
the most dif cult slopes and the highest peaks hove into view. They are both connected
and lonely. Leaders and strategists. Not unlike many CEOs.

The time trial is known as the race of truth. It involves either a single rider or a team
racing against the clock. There is no hiding place. When performed by an individual, this
is the closest cycling gets to the workplace assessment; the combination of
measurement, delivery and individual scrutiny. The coasters, the tryers and the high
achievers are easy to spot. More interesting is the team time trial. Five have to cross the
line before the clock stops. Nine begin the stage and work in unison. All for one and one
for all. But the team is only as strong as the fth strongest member, so the high achievers
have to hold themselves in check and serve their teammates. Otherwise their high
capability in this form of racing can be harmful to their colleagues. To perform well in an
individual time trial, you have to know yourself and your limitations. To perform well in
a team time trial you have to know the abilities and limitations of all your teammates as
well, and cater to them.

Rouleurs are strong riders, adept in rolling terrain, time trials, sprint trains and chasing
down breakaways. These are team people whose primary role is service of others,
assuming domestique functions. I liken them to the internal service roles in corporations:
the people in nance, facilities, HR, IT, learning and development and KM departments.
Occasionally they are set free to pursue personal goals, getting into breakaways,
winning time trials. This is not unlike the occasions when somebody from a support
function takes on a leadership or specialist expert role in a corporate project. Often
rouleurs like Bernie Eisel of Team Sky take on the role of captain on the road. They guide
and in uence their colleagues and act as the link between the other cyclists and the
directeurs sportif in the team cars.

Cycling teams involve not only the riders but a supporting infrastructure. This is
comprised of sporting directors, coaches, medical staff, nutritionists, chefs, mechanics
and bus drivers. Former cyclists often ful l the role of sporting directors, helping the
team operate within its loose framework and achieve its race objectives. These are the
people who drive the team cars, liaise with the riders on the road from their vehicles and
via radios, handing out food, drink and clothing. Other former riders travel ahead of the
race too, reporting back on weather and road conditions, providing information that can
inform decisions taken by the riders themselves.

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Beyond the teams of riders and support staff, there is a broad range of interacting
systems. Within the context of the race itself are the race organisers and the hosts of the
start and nish of each stage. Then there are the media, the police, the publicity caravan,
the volunteers controlling crowds and agging road furniture, the spectators themselves.
Not forgetting the roads, the roundabouts, the level crossings, the bridges. The weather is
also a huge factor. Intense heat, pouring rain, strong wind, heavy snow all have an
impact on the peloton and what it can achieve. Nothing operates in isolation, just like
our businesses and the multiple interacting systems they have to navigate – from
nancial markets to regulation to customer needs. The peloton and the business
constantly have to respond and adapt to external factors.

Peloton formations is all about the uidity and agility not only of modern organisational
structures but of the roles and responsibilities of those who work within them. It
recognises the need for people who are able to lead, follow, guide, advise, specialise or
generalise, adapting to changes in context and circumstances. People who work in small
units in synchronicity with and service of a larger whole. People willing to experiment,
learn and act on new knowledge. People who can respond and adapt to systemic shifts
and changes in their customers’ needs.

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 Peloton interview

This interview with Stowe Boyd was rst published on the Gigaom Research website in
July 2014.

Richard Martin wrote a series of posts in which he characterized people working

together productively as being like the bicycle racing phenomenon of the peloton: the
main group of riders that conserve energy by riding close together.

Martin’s exposition owes a great deal to Dan Pontefract, who used the analogy in a
post last year, but Martin has intertwingled it with Jon Husband’s wirearchy notion,
and the thinking of other theorists and practitioners.

I thought I’d ask Richard some questions, and the interchange below is the result.

Stowe Boyd: I think there is a great deal of depth in the metaphor of new way of work
being like the peloton, which is the formation of cyclists in a road race. The cyclists ride
in close formation because of the bene ts in reducing drag, but of course different teams
are trying to win the race even while bene tting from the aerodynamics of being in a
pack.

Richard Martin: One of the things that unites the cycling peloton is common purpose.
All the teams, all the riders, are trying to get from point A to point B on a designated
course as safely and in the shortest amount of time possible. Additionally, day-by-day, in
long stage races like the Tour de France, each team will have a slightly different
objective. Some are aiming for the overall prize of the yellow jersey awarded to the rider
who covers the entire course in the least amount of time. Others target the white jersey
of the best young rider, the green jersey of the points classi cation leader or the polka-
dot jersey of the mountain climber’s classi cation. The composition of their team may
well re ect these particular goals. Others still may simply target a stage win on a speci c
day when the terrain and conditions suits their team or, more modestly, may hope for
lengthy TV exposure for their corporate sponsors by getting one or more of their riders
into the day’s breakaway.

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Because of this mixture of goals, sometimes you will witness great examples of
partnership, collaboration and cooperation between riders and different trade teams.
There is also, of course, a lot of competition too. In the latter case, though, it might not
just be people competing against one another but against the elements, the terrain or the
clock. There is wonderful human drama in evidence in bicycle racing. There is also a lot
of camaraderie and mutual respect that transcends the boundaries between trade or
national teams. You can get a taste for this by following a few professional riders on
Twitter.

In the context of the racing itself, it is evident on the days that the race routes head
steeply upwards into mountainous terrain. While TV coverage focuses on the front end
of the race, behind it the peloton fragments into many parts. Right at the back a
gruppetto of riders forms, usually composed of the sprinters, the riders with bigger
physiques, the cooked and the wounded. They work together regardless of team
af liation. Their goal is to arrive together as a single unit at the nish line within a time
limit calculated on the basis of the stage winner’s nishing time. Another example of
cross-team cooperation can be seen in the way breakaway riders work together to stay
away from the peloton. It is only in the last kilometres of the stage when this cooperation
gives way to competition again. The breakaway usually serves as the hare to the
peloton’s greyhound. Occasionally, though, the hare eludes the hound – especially in
cases when the cooperation between the breakaway group persists to within sight of the
nish line.

From a business perspective, there is a lot to be said for this notion of common purpose
that can help unite multiple divisions and project teams. But also for those willing to
partner and cooperate with others, even those outside your own company. I recently
read A. G. La ey and Roger Martin’s Playing to Win. It is not a book I enjoyed.
Nevertheless, there are some good examples in it of when P&G realised they could
create more value by partnering and cooperating with companies who were competitors
in other elds. I think you witness evidence of this on a daily basis in the cycling
peloton.

SB: On top of the manoeuvring of the teams against each other, there is a dynamic
interplay among the members of a team, where they switch off in different roles, taking
turns leading, sprinting and climbing. That seems to be in perfect alignment with the
notion of uid or emergent leadership: what I refer to as leanership. There has to be a lot
of planning and communication for that to work, right?

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RM: My thinking about this has been strongly in uenced by Jon Husband and his
concept of wirearchy. Jon de nes wirearchy as: ‘a dynamic, two-way ow of power and
authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by
interconnected people and technology.’ What intrigues me about Jon’s concept is that he
is not denying the existence of a hierarchy, but he recognises that this has shifted from a
pyramid to a network model. Do any network analysis, and you will identify nodes of
in uence and authority. These do not recognise the stripes on the arm or the job titles
that we associate with military-industrial ideas about hierarchy. These in uential nodes
are also in a constant state of ux. Leadership roles may be de ned, as in more
traditional notions of hierarchy, but what is different here is that people move uidly to
and from these roles, dependent on context and circumstance. So, as I work on multiple
projects for my employer, in one situation I may be the leader, in another I will follow
someone else’s lead, and in yet another I may be acting more in a consultancy capacity,
providing specialist subject matter expertise.

You certainly observe this uidity of roles and leadership responsibilities in the cycling
team. This can be determined by a number of factors: terrain on the day, weather
conditions, the form of the rider, experience. Even on the day itself leadership
responsibilities will shift as the race progresses. Usually teams will have a road captain.
In most cases this is not the team’s main sprinter or climber but one of the support riders
or domestiques. This individual will be liaising with the directeur sportif via radios or
visits to the team car, but there will also be a high degree of autonomy for the other
riders, with each of them responding to what they see around them, assessing risks,
seizing opportunities.

Some teams are built around sprinters who come into their own on atter stages. Sprint
trains form in front of the sprinter, with a line of riders following closely on one another’s
wheel. The front rider punches a hole through the air, takes the wind resistance, and
their colleagues ride in their slipstream. When they peel off another comes to the front,
and so on until, with about 300m to go, the sprinter comes to the fore. All along, they
will have been calling our instructions and encouragement from the rear of the sprint
train. On mountainous days, the team puts themselves in service of their climber, who
also, if they can time trial too, is often their contender for the overall general
classi cation. The team members aim to deliver their leader to the foothills of the day’s
nal climb in the leading group so that they are in a position to compete for the stage
victory or minimise the loss of time to their main rivals.

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Cycling, in this sense, is infused with the idea of servant leadership. I think there were a
couple of great examples of this from Team Sky at the 2012 Tour de France. Often we
would see television images of Mark Cavendish, adorned in the rainbow stripes of the
reigning world champion, ferrying water from the team car to his teammates. This, bear
in mind, was the world’s dominant sprinter at the time, who was putting personal
ambitions on hold in support of the team’s overall objective: securing the yellow jersey
for Bradley Wiggins. On the nal stage of the same race, with Wiggins’s and the team’s
victory assured, we then witnessed a role reversal. The nal stage is an iconic race for
sprinters, one that Cavendish had won each of the previous three years. There in his
sprint train, in service of Cavendish and his goal, was Wiggins leading out his friend and
teammate.

As for planning, there is certainly a lot of work done. Many teams will visit certain
climbs and stage nishes well in advance of the grand tours. On race day itself, they will
send former road racing professionals ahead to check conditions (both of the road and
the weather) and to communicate their ndings back to the team car and the riders.
British cycling coach Rod Ellingworth has written an illuminating book called Project
Rainbow. It describes the collaborative work of backroom staff, coaches and riders in
planning for the 2011 men’s world road race championships and for the 2012 Olympic
Games race. For the GB team, their aim of securing bunch sprint nishes for Cavendish
earned victory in the 2011 world championships and nothing at all at his home
Olympics. The team rode strongly on both occasions, but others had learned how to
counteract their tactics by the time of the latter race.

What emerges in bike racing are loose frameworks rather than detailed plans. This is not
racing by remote control. It involves decision making at the edges as well as in team
management. Not all variables can be accounted for, and riders need to be able to
respond to what they see before them. This is well illustrated in a video exploring Team
Garmin Sharp’s targeting of stage 9 of the 2013 Tour de France. Dave Brailsford, one of
the leaders behind the recent success of British Cycling and Team Sky, is interviewed in
Richard Hytner’s recent book, Consiglieri: Leading from the Shadows. He makes an
interesting observation: ‘My approach is as an orchestra conductor, with an absolute
recognition that the most important people in our world are the people who win and
they’re the riders.’ Brailsford and colleagues can select the nine-man team for the Tour,
but then they have to get out of the way and trust the instincts, expertise and experience
of the riders on each day of racing.

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SB: You’ve written about the various roles in a cycling team, and how these roles are
similar to archetypes in the new way of work. The climber, for example, has attributes of
a driven, high energy visionary. Perhaps you could give a short explanation of the other
roles?

RM: When they step into their leadership roles on the atter ground, sprinters are great
salesmen. I mean this in the sense intended by Dan Pink in To Sell is Human. They sell
ideas, galvanising their teammates, getting them to believe in their objective for the day,
building common purpose, and inspiring them to invest effort in delivering them to the
nish line, where they will complete the job. It is notable that the rst action of the
highly successful sprinters like Mark Cavendish, André Greipel and Marcel Kittel is that
they greet their colleagues at the nish line to thank them for their efforts. There is also a
commercial aspect to the sprinter’s salesmanship. They are often great communicators,
comfortable in front of the media cameras and microphones. Their job is to cross the
nish line, arms in the air, displaying the names and logos of their corporate sponsors.
They are mobile, high velocity advertising hoardings.

Rouleurs are strong riders, adept in rolling terrain, time trials, sprint trains and chasing
down breakaways. These are team people whose primary role is service of others,
assuming domestique functions. I liken them to the internal service roles in corporations,
the people in nance, facilities, HR, IT, learning and development and KM departments.
Occasionally they are set free to pursue personal goals, getting into breakaways,
winning time trials. This is not unlike the occasions when somebody from a support
function takes on a leadership or specialist expert role in a corporate project.

Baroudeurs are among my favourite riders. These are the change agents, the chancers
and experimenters. They constantly challenge the status quo, making things up as they
go along, taking risks, testing their colleagues in the peloton. There was a great example
of this in Tuesday’s Tour de France stage this week. A strong group of baroudeurs –
people who can climb but not overall contenders for the Tour win – had formed an
impressive breakaway. As they hit the nal climb they began challenging one another,
comfortable in the knowledge that one of their number would win the stage. Two riders
from Team Europcar were working together, taking it turns to attack. They could not
shake loose Michael Rogers from Team Tinkoff Saxo, though, and in the end he chose his
moment to attack and just rode away from them. His post race interview was brilliant,
demonstrating a cool, calculating mind, mental fortitude, a tolerance of risk and an

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acceptance of possible failure. If you do not try things out, how will you learn if they are
going to work or not?

That covers the riders, but we must not forget that a role is also played by the tour
organisers, the local government for the towns that play host to the start and end of each
stage, the police, the backroom staff for each team, the directeurs sportifs, and the riders’
coaches, not to mention the crowds that line the route. These are the policy makers, the
regulators, the landlords, the suppliers and customers that are all involved to varying
degrees in a company’s business.

SB: It’s the uidity and near ight of the peloton that makes it such an inspiring image. In
one of your pieces you call it ‘humankind’s answer to the murmuration of starlings’.
How can we transcend the poetic and aspiration of the peloton into concrete learning
for the business, today?

RM: The reason I am so drawn to the metaphor of the cycling peloton as a model for
organisational structure is because it is suggestive of responsiveness, uidity, agility and
adaptiveness. I like the idea of small pods or teams loosely joined, which respond and
cater to their customer needs. This can mean the rapid forming, disbanding and
reshaping of teams to deliver different projects. These can extend beyond organisational
boundaries too, suggesting the permeability of the modern, responsive company. A
project team can be comprised of your own employees working in partnership with
people not on your payroll. It can include your customers and suppliers too.

The other thing I take away from bike racing is this idea of multiple systems being
interdependent on one another. On any given day you could have a route that covers
200-plus kilometres, travelling through numerous towns and cities, over railway
crossings, bridges and roundabouts. Agreements have to be drawn up with these
communities, crowd control needs to be put in place, and the roads closed for a period
of time. Then there is all the infrastructure of the race itself, the catering vehicles,
publicity caravan, the media, the gendarmerie, the team cars and support vehicles. There
are the huge crowds too, who on mountainous stages will be spilling on to the road, and
who have to be trusted not to interfere with the riders as they pass by. On top of all that
there are the meteorological conditions and the state of the roads to be traversed too. A
huge spaghetti soup of complex interlocking systems. No one of these systems can be
treated in isolation. Just like the different systems that shape and inform the operation of
any other business.

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Peloton interview

I get frustrated when I hear people talking about work as an ecosystem operating in
splendid isolation from everything else – government policy, nancial markets, customer
needs. As a counter argument I’m inclined to use an example that affected me earlier
this year: we experienced heavy rainfall in Kent where I live. When the rain stopped our
streets were lightly dusted with sand from the Saharan desert. What a great example of
how different ecosystems connect and are dependent on one another.

Richard’s expansion of Pontefract’s peloton metaphor is rich and illuminating. The

interplay between different roles in the teams is captivating, and so is the manner in
which individuals lead at the front – to break the air for the peloton and their teammates
in it – and then fall back into the pack as another – often a competitor – presses forward
to take a turn at the front.

Martin draws our attention to the image of ‘small teams, loosely joined’ – an allusion to
David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined, I’m sure. I’ve written on the distinction
between different social scales, and the way that the interplay differs in small sets of
people – networks of a few or a handful of people – versus the louder and less intimate
interactions of social scenes, where dozens or hundreds may be connected.

I’ve made the claim that we live our work lives in our sets, although businesses may
want to treat us as scenes, thinking that it is easier and more ef cient. But we are more
at home and at ease when working as a sprinter or climber on a team, jostling for
position in the peloton, signalling and pushing the team ahead, one of the loosely
joined.

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The baroudeur

Earlier in the day six riders had each pulled away from the peloton. Representing
different trade teams, ve of them eventually had cohered into a cooperative group; a
small, dynamic pod sharing responsibilities, with each rider uidly moving from leader
to follower and back again. It was a challenging ninth stage of the 2011 Tour de France,
from Issoire to Saint-Flour, featuring eight categorised climbs. These tended to have an
elastic effect on the group with riders dropping away as they tackled the ascents and
descents at their own pace, then putting in great efforts to regain contact with their
breakaway companions. Nervousness and tight roads were also contributing to crashes
back in the main peloton. Some of the teams encountered misfortune, seeing their
general classi cation contenders exit the race after one particular body-damaging, bone-
breaking pile-up on a treacherous descent. Up the road, the breakaway group continued
to cooperate establishing a lead of over seven minutes while the peloton regrouped after
the crash.

With 36km of the day’s stage remaining, the lead was down to ve minutes. Still a
healthy advantage. It was looking like it would be a day of glory for one of the
breakaway riders. One of those days that produced more than just extended television
airtime for the corporate sponsors whose names and logos adorn the riders’ clothing. A
day that would result in podium celebrations. Some of the breakaway group had their
eyes on bigger prizes too. Thomas Voeckler (Europcar) had a chance of becoming the
overall race leader, getting his hands on the coveted yellow jersey for the second time in
his career having worn it previously in 2004. Johnny Hoogerland (Vancansoleil-DCM)
was looking a likely contender for the polka-dot jersey, which is awarded to the leader
of the mountains classi cation. Niki Terpstra (Quickstep), an early member of the escape
group, had faded away on the day’s rst climb. But Sandy Casar (FDJ), Juan Antonio
Flecha (Team Sky) and Luis León Sánchez (Rabobank) were all strong riders and in the
mix for the stage win. For two of the riders, though, disaster was about to strike.

A car carrying personnel from French television accelerated alongside the breakaway
group. Suddenly it swerved to the right to avoid a tree on the verge of the road, thereby
triggering a domino effect. The car, still travelling at high speed, clipped Juan Antonio
Flecha sending him sprawling to the oor. As he hit tarmac, Johnny Hoogerland hit him
and was catapulted through the air on to a barbed wire fence. Voeckler and the others
accelerated away to contest the stage victory, the Frenchman taking over the overall race
leadership and Luis León Sánchez winning the day. Remarkably both Flecha and

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 The baroudeur

Hoogerland would remount their bikes and complete the stage, over 16 minutes after
the winner. The Dutchman, whose kit had been shredded on impact with the fence, and
bearing deep wounds on his legs that would require multiple stitches, even went on to
participate in a delayed podium ceremony at which he was awarded the polka-dot
jersey.

I share this tale not to marvel at the dangers encountered by the professional cyclist, nor
to rubber-neck at a particularly gruesome incident in the recent history of the Tour de
France. Rather, in developing the metaphor of peloton formations and its application to
the workplace, I want to take some time to look at the different character types that
make up the peloton. What distinguishes them from the others? Do they have
counterparts in the modern of ce? Are there any lessons we can learn from them? In
future posts, I will have a look at the sprinter, the climber and the rouleur. Possibly
others too. Today it is the turn of the baroudeur, epitomised by the likes of Thomas
Voeckler and Johnny Hoogerland.

The baroudeur is beautifully described by Paul Fournel in Vélo, his poetic collection of
cycling essays published by Rouleur. Baroudeurs are adventurers, opportunists and
chancers. They do not seek the love of their colleagues in the peloton, but strain at the
leash, pushing against convention, experimenting and taking risks. They are generalists
and polymaths, adept at multiple disciplines. As Fournel puts it:

There is no set format for a baroudeur. Neither a true sprinter, nor a true
climber, nor exactly a rouleur, the baroudeur is all of those at once. He
is capable of all of it, but in his own time. He knows that he will not
beat the sprinters at the nish and so he has to set off beforehand. He
knows that he will not beat the climbers in the high mountains; he
makes his kingdom in the medium mountains. He knows that he will
not drop everyone on the rst push so he puts in a second.

The baroudeurs remind me of the rebels on the edges in today’s business world. The
workplace baroudeur is the one likely to challenge the status quo, to seek out new ways
of doing things, to experiment and play, accepting many failures, learning from them
and, occasionally, enjoying success. A group of baroudeurs, willing to cooperate with
one another, are the ideal advance party. The experimental pod assembled for time-
bound, nancially-constrained exploration and testing. The skunk works team not afraid
to indulge in trial and error and the tolerance of risk as they head into the unknown,

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The baroudeur

operating under a loose framework but with common purpose and a shared vision.
These are the people who will act now and, if necessary, apologise later. They will not
be held back by bureacracy or industrial tradition.

The workplace baroudeur, then, is often the catalyst to change. Having blazed a trail,
others will follow, new pods forming to lead the company into the future, putting new
ideas and theory into practice. The original breakaway will often get absorbed back into
those embryonic pods, their lessons captured, their knowledge shared with others in a
continuous cycle of progression and re nement.

This is not a new story. There are many examples from 3M, Apple, Google, W.L. Gore,
Semco and others. There is a spirit of entrepreneurialism, disruption and innovation
about the baroudeur.

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 The climber

It is a damp and miserable March day on the island of Corsica. The third and nal stage
of the Critérium International 2013 is building to a conclusion. The peloton began the
day in Porto-Vecchio and are now on the lower slopes of the Col de l’Ospedale. Richie
Porte (Team Sky) wears the race leader’s yellow jersey having won the previous day’s
time trial and safely negotiated the opening stage bunch sprint. His friend and teammate,
Chris Froome, is fourth in the overall standings. Froome is the designated leader of Team
Sky for this race, building and testing his form prior to the Tour de France later in the
Summer for which he will be one of the favourites. The mountains are the territory in
which he comes into his own. As the road begins to ramp up, it is likely that today’s
stage will enjoy an explosive nish – if Sky can successfully implement their race plan.

One by one Joe Dombrowski, Jon Tiernan-Locke, Xabi Zandio and Kanstantsin Siutsou
put in efforts that help control the peloton and limit the number of escapees, before
themselves slipping back into the ranks. There follows a huge turn at the front by Vasil
Kiryienka, stretching out and fragmenting the bunch, leading it into the foothills of the
day’s nal climb. By the time Froome oats to the front, there is only a select group of
riders, all accomplished climbers, left chasing the last of the escapees. Froome puts in a
dig and Porte stays back allowing his teammate to build a gap between himself and the
group. Froome checks over his shoulder then accelerates away. Within moments he has
caught and overtaken Johann Tschopp (IAM Cycling), towing Jean-Christophe Péraud
(Ag2r-La Mondiale) with him. He pauses, assesses the condition of the other two riders
then dances on the pedals again. Neither Tschopp nor Péraud can stay with him. Back
down the road Porte bides his time, not leading the chase but monitoring the actions of
those remaining in the group.

With 2km remaining, Froome has established an unassailable lead. It is at this point that
Porte launches an attack of his own, catching and leaving all those who were chasing
Froome. Sky have executed their plan to perfection, catapulting Froome to overall
victory and enjoying rst and second placings with Froome and Porte on both the day’s
stage and the general classi cation. This will serve as a platform for greater things later in
the season, with Froome going on to win the Tour de Romandie, the Critérium du
Dauphiné and, the ultimate prize, the yellow jersey of the Tour de France. Common
purpose, a shared vision, planning, practice and the magic dust of the climber freed

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 The climber

from constraint will all contribute to this second successive season of stage racing
accomplishment for Team Sky.

As we continue our exploration of the peloton metaphor, then, it is to the climber that
we now turn. This is the individual around whom myth and fable hang like a cloak. The
nicknames acquired by these giants of the road speak volumes: The Angel of the
Mountains (Charly Gaul), The Eagle of Toledo (Federico Bahamontes), Il Campionissimo
(Fausto Coppi), The Cannibal (Eddy Merckx, who was in truth the master of all terrains
and all road cycling disciplines), The Badger (Bernard Hinault, another accomplished
all-rounder) and the drug-addled but nevertheless mesmerising Il Pirata (Marco Pantani).
The stories that swirl around them speak of immense feats, de ance of the natural order,
resistance of gravity and overreaching to the point of personal destruction. It is the stuff
of comic books; dreams made reality, visions made manifest. These are people set apart
from their companions in the peloton. As Paul Fournel puts it in Vélo:

From the rst accelerations on the early slopes of a col, the peloton
splits and transforms itself into a contest of grimaces and every man for
himself. The climber dances, plays with the slopes and the hairpins,
sometimes sitting, sometimes standing. Whereas the average cyclist
opens his mouth wide and looks for a steady pace as protection against
deadly accelerations, the climber takes up the pace of his kind and casts
stones before taking off for good. Setting off at high speed, the small
motor of the climber doesn’t seem to suffer from the lack of oxygen of
Alpine altitudes. The climber hides a big secret in his little torso.

There is a great, perhaps apocryphal, tale about Spanish climber Federico Bahamontes
racing ahead of the peloton up the climb of the Col de Romeyère in the 1954 Tour de
France. The rst to reach the summit, many minutes ahead of the next rider, he then
wheeled his bike over to a metal cart and stopped to eat an ice cream. Bahamontes then
bided his time waiting for his competitors to catch up. As a metaphor, I love this. The
visionary trail blazer, showing the way, striking out ahead, leading his people to the
summit. Then waiting for them to follow, in their own way, learning much about their
personal abilities and potential. When the descent begins, he is happy for others to take
the lead, following the wheels of fellow riders, reintegrating himself into the pack,
seeking the protection and nurture of his teammates, who will again follow his lead
when the next slopes are attained.

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The climber

When I think of both the apparent physical delicacy, the single-minded vision, strong
will and purpose of the climber, I cannot help but draw analogies with similarly driven
business leaders like the late Steve Jobs or Pixar’s Ed Catmull. Such people seem to be
able to see things that many of us cannot even imagine until we suddenly nd that we
have been led there. Think the iPhone. Think the iPad. Think different. While we’re
coming to terms with yesterday’s ideas, technology, entertainment and working
practices, they’re busy laying the foundations for new cathedrals, building the future for
our grandchildren to enjoy. They’re resting on the summit, looking for the next peak to
climb, while we’re back with the gruppetto in the foothills.

Every company needs a climber. Someone to paint a vision of the future, forcing us to
reach for the ineffable. Their energy and drive is what keeps entropy at bay.

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 The sprinter

It is Sunday 4 May 2014. 5km remain of the eighth and nal stage of this year’s edition
of the Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey. A line of Orica-GreenEDGE riders leads the
peloton at a high tempo. A bunch sprint nish looks almost certain to determine the
outcome of the day’s stage. The focus of the Orica-GreenEDGE riders, however, is
elsewhere. The stage victory is not their goal. One of their number, Adam Yates, is
wearing the race leader’s jersey. If they can usher him safely to the 3km-to-go marker,
they know their job will have been successfully accomplished. Should any rider in this
leading bunch crash during those last 3km they will be awarded the same time as the
stage victor. In other words Yates’s overall victory will be assured.

The Orica-GreenEDGE team hit their marker and drift back into the peloton. As they do
so, the red-clad Lotto Belisol sprint train pulls to the front. They have one of the world’s
best sprinters, André Greipel, in their number. Lotto Belisol is one of several teams who
have perfected the art of the sprinter’s lead out. Other masters in the 2014 peloton
include Giant-Shimano, who are not taking part in this event, and Omega Pharma-
Quick Step, who are and have already won three stages during the week with their
dominant sprinter, Mark Cavendish. Lotto Belisol appear to fancy their chances today but
remain alive to the dangers presented by some of the other teams who are also
beginning to form their lead-out trains.

This technique was popularised in the 1990s when Mario Cipollini was in his pomp
riding for the Saeco team, and going on to win an unprecedented 42 Giro d’Italia stage
victories. To see this performed well is like watching a shoal of sh or ock of birds in
motion. Everything is performed with speed and uidity. A line of riders line up one
behind the other, wheels almost touching. At the back of the line is their protected rider,
the designated sprinter for the day. Occasionally this individual will call out instructions,
particularly as they observe threats from other sprint trains or solitary riders who are
improvising their nales to the race without the support of their teammates. The rider at
the front of the line, provides protection for those behind them, taking the wind and air
resistance, punching a hole through it. One by one the riders at the front of the line peel
off until, nally, with usually 200-300m remaining of the stage, the sprinter jumps from
the slipstream of their nal lead-out man and launches themselves at the nish line.

A dark shadow looms behind the Lotto Belisol team. Wearing this season’s black and
white jerseys, the Omega Pharma-Quick Step train of Gianni Meersman, Alessandro

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 The sprinter

Petacchi, Gert Steegmans and Mark Renshaw begins to make its presence known. At
their tail is Cavendish adorned in the green jersey of the race’s points competition leader.
All ve are highly accomplished sprinters in their own right. But today, and for much of
the season, they have recognised Cavendish as their leader and put themselves at his
service. Victory for Cavendish is a victory for the team. Victory for the team pleases its
commercial sponsors, which often equates to continuity for the team and new contracts
for the riders next season. All for one and one for all.

With just over 2km remaining, Omega Pharma-Quick Step’s sprint train moves to the
front of the peloton. Each member of the team executes his role perfectly, maintaining a
high speed, safely negotiating the street furniture, seeing off the threats from the other
well-organised lead-out trains. The last man drops Cavendish off with less than 200m to
go. The Manxman stamps on his pedals and, from the apparent chaos of a swarm of
sprinters throwing themselves towards the nish line, the team’s fourth victory of the
week is duly delivered. Planning, camaraderie, leadership and trust have all contributed
to the team once again successfully negotiating the apparent complexity and chaos of
the bike race.

This is the latest instalment in a series of peloton formation posts. Others have focused
on the general idea of the peloton formation, as well as the characters of the baroudeur
and the climber. Today it is the turn of the sprinter – and not just as the individual who
blasts their way through the last few hundred metres of the bike race. The sprinter both
leads and is led. They are the protected ‘child’, wholly dependent on the kindness and
nurture of others. They are the leader who guides, directs, cajoles and inspires others to
ensure that the team is in the best possible position to contend for the stage victory. They
are also the team’s David sent forth to combat the Goliath of the peloton. They are
someone who is able to nd moments of clarity and cool judgement while riding out the
emotional roller coaster of the highly volatile sprint nish. Again, Paul Fournel captures
the sprinter beautifully in Vélo:

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 The sprinter

He is putting the tools of his trade to the test. Torsion on the handlebars,
squashing of the tyres and rims, torture of the bottom bracket, efforts to
drop the chain, destruction of the pedals. Going off at a patently
unreasonable speed, he knows he is guilty of a folly but he has
con dence. Con dence in himself and con dence in the privileged few
who still ght it out with him and barge him with their shoulder,
brushing against his spokes with their pedals, zigzagging on the road in
front of him. When he is nally sure of his victory and when the nish
line is his, he lifts his head and then his arms in a beautiful unfurling
which resembles taking ight. At that moment of glory, he smiles at his
strength and the logos inscribed on his jersey are perfectly readable.
He’s a good salesman, the sprinter.

As Dan Pink has observed, to sell is human. There is no doubt that the sprinter is an
excellent salesperson, the perfect advertising hoarding. Often you’ll see them crossing
the line pointing at their chests, not as a bravura statement of their own excellence but
drawing attention to the names of their corporate sponsors. This extends to great
communication skills too, with many of the sprinters proving to be engaging
personalities comfortable in front of the media cameras and microphones. While there is
no doubt that in the adrenaline-fuelled nale of a race, the con dence that Fournel
alludes to can translate into the in ation of ego, there is another dimension to these
sprinting supremos. Watch the rst actions of a Cavendish, Greipel or Marcel Kittel after
a stage victory. What you see is them greeting, embracing and thanking their teammates
one by one. There is a form of servant leadership in play here, evidence of that versatility
so necessary in the modern organisation. People who can lead, follow and exercise their
own specialisms as required.

This was illustrated fantastically by Cavendish during the 2012 Tour de France. Riding for
Team Sky at the time, Cavendish was required to put his personal ambitions on hold as
the team rode in service of a different goal: a yellow jersey for Bradley Wiggins.
Cavendish, himself wearing the Rainbow-striped jersey of the reigning world champion,
was to be seen working tirelessly for the cause. He often led the peloton into the
foothills of climbs, and was to be observed trekking back and forth from the team car,
ferrying water bottles to his teammates. With Wiggins’s overall victory assured, the efforts
of Cavendish were recognised and rewarded by his friend. One of the great sights from
that Tour was that of Wiggins in the yellow jersey playing a key role in the lead-out train
that would result in Cavendish’s stage victory on the nal stage on the Champs Élysées.

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 The sprinter

There is something here that reminds me of the 20% time at Google and other
organisations. Companies have their own objectives to meet, strategies that span several
years, products with time-bound life cycles, multiple projects to deliver. Nevertheless,
some of the more enlightened companies also recognise the importance of their people
and giving them the space to develop both personally and professionally. As such, a
percentage of the working week, sometimes as much as 20%, is allotted to staff working
on personal projects. The individual builds competency and broadens their range of
interests, while the company derives bene t from a contented, well-rounded workforce.
Sometimes even from the output of the side project too; the post-it note at 3M and
Gmail at Google being well-documented examples.

The sprinter demonstrates great skill and awareness, knowing when to assume the lead
and push for the delivery of their personal project, and when to put themselves at the
service of others and their objectives. In the apparent chaos of the peloton, they are
surprising sources of insight and logical calm; more chess masters than frenetic athletes
until they are called into action in the bunch sprint. They seek patterns in complexity,
helping their teammates react to and navigate subtle shifts in their circumstances and
environment. As the occasion requires it, the sprinter and their train respond with
exibility and agility. Humankind’s answer to the murmuration of starlings.

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 The rouleur

April 2011. The 109th edition of Paris-Roubaix is in full ight. This is one of the great
one-day challenges in the cycling calendar. It is the Queen of the Classics, one of several
one-day races held in France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands during March and
April. Also known as the Hell of the North, it covers many cobblestone sections of road
in northeastern France. It is a race that has been dominated in recent years by Tom
Boonen and Fabian Cancellara. But an upset is on the cards. Some of the favourites have
suffered mishaps on the road, while others have been marking one another out of the
race. With only ve sections of cobblestones remaining before the nish in the Roubaix
velodrome, a group of four riders have pulled away. The move was initiated by Lars
Ytting Bak (HTC-Highroad). He has been followed by Grégory Rast (RadioShack),
Maarten Tjallingii (Rabobank) and Johann Van Summeren (Garmin-Cervélo).

As the group closes in on the velodrome, Van Summeren attacks and pulls aways. He
will ride solo to victory. Behind the remnants of the breakaway, Fabian Cancellara
(Leopard Trek), the previous year’s winner, puts in a huge turn, demonstrating his skills as
a multiple world time trial champion. He catches the group and takes second place.
Tjallingii takes the third spot on the podium. Our focus, though, is on the man who
comes in fth and instigated the breakaway, Lars Ytting Bak. A former Danish road and
multiple time trial champion, Bak has just put in a performance that will earn him a
place in the HTC-Highroad team at the 2011 Tour de France. It will be the rst time he
has participated in the race. He won the young riders equivalent, the Tour de l’Avenir,
back in 2005. He is now 31 years old.

Despite his domestic championship triumphs, much of Bak’s professional cycling career
has and will be spent in the service of others: sprinters like Mark Cavendish and André
Greipel; climbers and general classi cation contenders like Jurgen Van Den Broeck. He
carries out domestique duties. He fetches food, drink and clothing from the team car for
his teammates. He protects them from the wind. He chases down breakaways. He helps
control the peloton, either ensuring a bunch sprint at the close of the stage, or the
launch of the team’s climbers up the nal peak of the day. When required, he forms part
of the sprinter’s lead-out train. Occasionally, as at Paris-Roubaix, his role is to get into
the breakaways, riding with the baroudeurs, either aiming for the win himself, or
disrupting the ow of the breakaway, enabling his teammates behind to catch them.
Either way, this ensures exposure of his team sponsors for the many hours he will be
visible on television. It can also enhance his personal palmarès. In 2012, for example,

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 The rouleur

he will win stage 12 of the Giro d’Italia, attacking other members of the breakaway
group he has been working with when there are only 2km of the stage remaining.

Bak’s value to the teams for which he rides lies in his strength, power and consistency.
He is a rouleur. He thrives in the race of truth against the clock of the time trial and on
the cobbles of the one-day classics. This is where he displays his specialism and
expertise. Otherwise he demonstrates his generalism in the service of others. In the 2011
Tour de France, for example, Bak will often be seen leading the peloton. His role is to
help manage the time gap to the breakaway, ensure it is not closed too soon, prevent
new attacks from being launched, and perfectly set up a sprint nish. Cavendish will win
ve stages for the team, with Bak and his teammates making signi cant contributions.
He is the embodiment of the rouleur that Paul Fournel describes in Vélo:

The rouleur has long-lasting majesty. His talent consists of a statuesque

position: the rouleur knows how to stay in an impeccable (and
unbearable) position for hours, body bent in two, arms at right angles,
face lowered, the top of his head open to the breeze. He manages the
wind like a bass manages the sea. He rides gears as heavy as anvils
while having the elegance never to show it.

The rouleur, then, leads in service. He is the foundation block for his team. What
Fournel describes as ‘the indispensable base of the trade of cycling’. In a business
context, I see the rouleur as the equivalent to those people who make up business
services functions – HR, learning and development, knowledge management, nance,
IT, facilities, communications. If an organisation exists to meet its customers needs, then
the same applies in its internal operation. There is a supporting infrastructure in place,
where certain roles and functions are intended to service internal customers. The HR or
IT professional work as domestiques for colleagues who are themselves delivering
products and services to external people. Their role is to enable and support. They take
the wind, fetch the water bottles, so that their colleagues may excel to the bene t of all.
Occasionally they get to exercise their own specialisms, guiding on policy, deploying
new technologies, ensuring the smooth running of the company.

The rouleur is the bedrock and the organisational spine. They are the rst follower,
putting in place the foundations that will result in the corporate vision being achieved.

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 The puncheur

6 July 2015. The peloton is taking a literal and metaphorical buffeting in the 102nd
edition of the Tour de France. The race started in the atlands of the Netherlands and is
now into the terrain of the Spring classics in Belgium. The rst nine days have been
designed as a series of unique one-day challenges. This is a departure from previous
starts to the race. It means that the teams participating in the Grand Tour, especially
those with ambitions for the general classi cation, have had to give careful thought to
the diversity and skill sets of their riders.

To show up with nine lightweight climbers who will oat up the Pyrenean peaks and
effortlessly ascend the Alps will be to place yourself on the back foot. Such riders will
struggle in the coastal winds of Zeeland and the cobbles of northern France. They may
be suffering an extreme time de cit by the start of the second week when the rst
mountaintop nish comes into view. Conversely, to ll the team with sprinters and
rouleurs may provide dividends with the odd stage win and time spent in the
classi cation jerseys during the rst week. However, when the terrain tilts upwards, such
teams will nd that they are severely hamstrung.

A balance is required, including not only climbers, sprinters, rouleurs, time trialists and
general classi cation contenders, but a type of rider that we are yet to explore in this
peloton formations series: the puncheur. While much of the three-week race will be
spent in service of others, with the purpose of achieving both day-speci c and overall
objectives, each type of rider nevertheless is likely to enjoy a moment in the sun. So
varied is the type of racing and the daily parcours for this edition of the Tour, that there
will be stages when riders with different preferences and capabilities will be required to
assume time-bound leadership of the team.

Today – stage 3 – is the turn of the puncheur. Another opportunity will follow on stage 8
too, when the Tour takes on the challenges of the Mûr de Bretagne. These riders are
specialists in rolling terrain that is punctuated with short climbs of 1-2km in length,
characterised by extremely challenging gradients of 10-20%. Their domains are the hilly
one-day classic races like La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Tour of
Lombardy and the UCI Road World Championships. They count among their number
riders like Philippe Gilbert, Peter Sagan, Simon Gerrans, Joaquim ‘Purito’ Rodríguez,

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Tony Gallopin and Alexis Vuillermoz. As well as a few climber-puncheur hybrids like
Alejandro Valverde and Dan Martin.

Wind has been a feature of stages 2 and 3. Crashes too, including a mass, high-speed
pile-up earlier in the day, which has already removed three potential contenders for
today’s stage from consideration: Fabian Cancellara, Simon Gerrans and Michael
Matthews. So severe were some of the injuries, that the stage was brought temporarily to
a halt by the race organisers as there were not enough medical crews available in the
event of any further incident. As the race gets underway again, the puncheurs nd
themselves on familiar territory. The route takes in some of the same roads and climbs as
the Spring classic, La Flèche Wallonne, nishing on the steep ramp of the Mur de Huy.

The nervousness of the peloton is evident, even for the television spectator. The rst
week is always a nervy one, as teams attempt to hold position on narrow roads. The
wind and the crashes have exacerbated this. General classi cation contenders are
concerned too about losing time to their potential rivals. Too many people, too little
space, narrowed even further by exuberant crowds and road furniture. The teams work
to protect the leaders, to ensure that they are in a good position as they turn on to the
lower slopes of the nal climb up the Mur.

Team Sky have done an exceptional job for Chris Froome. He is at the front not so much
in an attempt to win the stage as to keep out of trouble and avoid either crashing or
losing time. Clearly, he is peaking at the right time, maintaining a high tempo up the
climb. Surging past him, albeit temporarily in some cases, are the puncheurs. Foremost
among them is Rodríguez, chased by Gallopin, Vuillermoz (who will win in Brittany a
few days later), Sagan and Martin. With Froome eventually regaining position, taking
second to Rodríguez, the others will make up the top ve riders for the stage. They have
ful lled their leadership responsibilities for the day.

There is something about the temporary moment in the spotlight for the puncheur that
reminds me of the directors who make up the executive teams in the world of
corporations, public bodies and non-pro t organisations. These are highly accomplished
individuals. They are leaders when they need to be, but are adept at following the lead
of others too. Unlike the rouleur, for example, who tends to assume domestique duties,
only occasionally venturing up the road to victory, or the baroudeur who tends to
embody the qualities of the maverick, the puncheur is meant to both lead the team and
chase the win – in the right context. When it is not their time, however, they step back
into the shadows, supporting the general classi cation contender, sometimes taking on a

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mentoring responsibility, the role of the consiglieri. Think Valverde and Nairo Quintana
in the Movistar team.

The puncheur, then, is like a George Harrison in The Beatles. Or a Jonathan Ive at Apple.
Or, until recently, a Yanis Varoufakis in the Greek government. They stand in the shadow
of the CEO, building rapport with their team, serving others with humility. But when the
need arises they can take possession of the stage, mesmerising and inspiring others with
their knowledge, experience and skills.

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Road captain

It is 28 July 2012. The peloton is on the ninth and nal circuit of the Box Hill climb in
the London Olympics men’s road race. This is a gold medal target for the GB team, who
are riding in support of one of the world’s top sprinters, Mark Cavendish. A breakaway
has formed ahead of the peloton, and one of the main threats to Cavendish’s ambitions,
Fabian Cancellara, takes this opportunity to attack and bridge across to them. As
Cancellara makes his move, Cavendish seeks to follow him. But he is called back by his
road captain, David Millar. Millar has judged that they are still too far out from the nish
line, and that they have a strong chance of reeling the breakaway in during the
remaining kilometres. He does not want Cavendish to expend unnecessary energy on
the chase now and have nothing left for the sprint nish they hope to set up.

As things transpire, however, the victor and other medallists all emerge from the
breakaway. The GB team’s attempts to control the peloton in the same manner that they
did in the previous year’s World Championship, admittedly with a larger team, will
prove ineffective. Other teams have learned from 2011 and know that if they work with
the GB team to close down the gap to the breakaway, there is every chance that they
will be helping set up Cavendish to add a gold medal to his World Champion’s Rainbow
jersey. There is no cooperation today. While Millar’s seemed the right call to make, in
retrospect it back res on the team.

The point here is not to highlight the wrong decision made but two other factors. First,
the autonomy of the cyclists on the road. The Olympics road race title was a long-term
objective for GB cycling, one element in their Project Rainbow, which included the
2011 success. It involved several years of collaboration between coaches, administrators
and riders from competing trade teams. Both events had Cavendish as their nominated
leader – the sprinter the others were riding to protect and to position for the race’s nish
– and Millar as the on-the-road captain. For all the planning and training, the riders have
to respond to conditions and context on the day. Both the Worlds and the Olympics are
races that do not allow for radio communication between team support cars and the
riders. Trust therefore has to be placed in the experience and decision-making of those
on the bikes, in particular the road captain.

Trust is the second factor to highlight. Cavendish’s trust in Millar is unwavering. While
they have a history of competing against one another for their respective trade teams,
with Millar working for one of Cavendish’s great rivals, Tyler Farrar, they have established

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a burgeoning friendship. This is a consequence not only of Project Rainbow and the
occasional training ride in one another’s company, but also of shared experiences at the
2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Millar is the elder rider who has experienced
both the highs and lows of the sport, including a ban for doping. He is knowledgeable
and experienced, nearing the end of his career, but still able to deliver moments of
adventure and panache. He is not unlike some of the player-managers that enjoyed
success in the top ights of football in the 1980s.

The road captain is most de nitely not a position of command and control. There is a
nurturing aspect to it. One founded on service of others; the team as a whole, the
cyclists on the road, the directors in the team car, the protected rider for the day, the
climber, the sprinter. Bernie Eisel is another close friend of Cavendish who has emerged
as a natural road captain at the trade teams in which they have ridden together,
including HTC Highroad and Team Sky. The supportive nature of his role is often hidden
from the television cameras. As the action happens up the road on the high peaks,
towards the back of the race, Eisel can be seen coaxing his sprinters up the long climbs.
In 2012, he also was instrumental in organising the team on the road in support of
Bradley Wiggins’s pursuit of the race leader’s yellow jersey in the Tour de France.

In other situations, the road captain, often themselves adept rouleurs, good time triallists
and occasional one-day race contenders, assumes the role of teacher. They are tutor,
guide and friend in a master-apprentice relationship with upcoming stars. This comes
across strongly in Beatrice Bartelloni’s description of her friendship with and respect for
two-time Road World Champion Giorgia Bronzini at the Wiggle-Honda women’s team.
On other occasions, teams contract with grizzled veterans like Roger Hammond,
Alessandro Petacchi, Juan Antonio Flecha, George Hincapie and Michael Rogers to take
on leadership roles in support of riders who were formerly their competitors and peers.
Petacchi’s role in support of Cavendish at Omega Pharma-Quick Step during the 2014
season is a case in point. At Team Katusha, in another example, Luca Paolini, still a
hugely accomplished rider in his own right, uses his craft, experience and decision-
making skills to enable sprinters like Alexander Kristoff and general classi cation
contenders like Purito Rodríguez to achieve podium success.

What cycling illustrates constantly is that leadership can come from anywhere. At the
heart of the peloton formations concept is the notion of uidity; uidity of organisational
structure, as well as uidity of roles and responsibilities. The road captain is not a
hierarchical role but more an articulation of the knowledge and mastery that are
necessary for success on the road. The role is taken on by different people on different

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days. Context is important, as is the individual’s relationship with the designated

protected rider. The road captains mentioned here share a strength of character,
conviction in their own decision-making, mutual trust with their teammates and a
willingness to share their experience. They are great tacticians and excellent
communicators.

As Millar’s Olympics story suggests, the road captains do not always get it right.
Nevertheless, they invariably enjoy the loyalty of fellow riders and support staff for
whatever decisions they make. This is not a blame game. Trust is all. This is built over
time through shared experiences. Evidence that their on-the-road guidance to teammates
can often make the difference between failure and success only serves to strengthen that
trust. Reigning Commonwealth Games champion Lizzie Armitstead recently described
the effect of her trade team road captain, Chantal Blaak, during the third stage of the
2015 Tour of Qatar. Blaak recognised the over-eagerness of her teammates, coaching
them and keeping them calm, guiding as they organised themselves for the stage win.
Her actions and encouragement of teammates helped secure the overall victory for
Armitstead and the Boels-Dolmans team the following day.

Like a good project manager or internal consultant in the corporate world, the cycling
road captain can lead from the front, from behind, from the side or from the shadows.
They coach, mentor and enable others, serving as social connectors between riders on
the road and the support teams behind the race. They are master craftsmen, big-picture
thinkers who improvise strategy on the y. They are decision-makers who unite
teammates in common purpose, maintaining that unity through both failure and success.
They are champions of the framework within which the team operates, the glue that
holds the team together.

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 Who leads?

Social movements and civil unrest. Popular challenges to long-established institutions.

Border-crossing networks of informed crowds seeking to exercise their rights. Whether
focused on scal policy, corporate corruption, inequality or the overthrow of
dictatorships, these have formed the backdrop of world affairs over the past decade.
They have been the subject of endless hours of media footage, reams of print, digital
comment and observation. The emergence of what Manuel Castells has termed
Networks of Outrage and Hope has raised a challenging question that continues to
perplex traditional media outlets and the machinery of the state. Who leads? It was a
question that greatly taxed the journalists as they interviewed the tent-dwelling
protestors of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Was the answer no-one or everyone or
it depends?

Strong, trust-based relationships are the genuine currency of networks. This was as true
of the salon-era communities that we associate with the political and artistic movements
of yesteryear as it is today. The difference now is that digital and mobile technologies
foster and enable the speed and scale at which networks can be established and grow. A
physical meeting strengthens a bond established online but it is not essential for the
overall health of the network. People on different continents, in different time zones, can
still connect on shared interests, fuelled by either hope or outrage, adding their voices
and energy to the greater whole. What characterises the network in these situations is a
uidity of knowledge, roles, responsibilities and authority. Leadership is in motion,
governed by context.

Networked partnerships, shaped by either collaboration or cooperation, are increasingly

evident in business too. As Nicholas Vitalari and Haydn Shaughnessy argue in The Elastic
Enterprise, this can happen between organisations, with certain enterprises like Alibaba,
Google, Github and Apple creating platforms or ecosystems; spaces for partnerships
with an array of other businesses both large and small. It can also happen within a single
organisation. In Creativity, Inc., for example, Ed Catmull outlines the leadership
responsibilities not only of the gurehead triumvirate of himself, Steve Jobs and John
Lasseter at Pixar and Disney, but also of writers, directors and animators too. Leadership
here can be a form of service, enabling others, guiding and advising.

It is also necessary to respond to context, recognising when it is your turn to take the
initiative, to put your expertise or specialism at the service of others. This is not a case of

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telling, but of opening up a conversation, making others comfortable contributing too.

Former rugby international Phil Greening has enjoyed success recently coaching the US
seven-a-side team. In a Guardian interview, he discusses how he and his colleagues
had to overhaul a command-and-control culture. Leadership has to come from within
the team, from anywhere on the playing eld. It is not the case of a coach simply
instructing players on what to do. Instead it is about developing a partnership,
recognising the skills and mastery, the autonomy, of each individual. As Paul Rees put it
in a recent Guardian article, ‘The very best teams harness individualism, not exile it.’

In peloton formations, I use the professional cycling peloton to illustrate the

responsiveness and exibility that is necessary in the modern organisational structure.
The metaphor also serves to highlight the absolute uidity of roles and responsibilities
within a cycling team itself and across the peloton as a whole. There is a constant need
to adapt to context. Cycling is a sport in which competition, collaboration and
cooperation are frequently in tension. Networked relationships across the peloton
underpin time-bound partnerships on the road – the ight of the breakaway from the
main bunch, for example – which eventually dissolve as the nish line nears. Within
each team trust is essential, so too the ful lment of speci c roles on designated days –
whether that is leading the pack up a climb, chasing down a breakaway, or taking your
place on a fast-moving sprint train.

Cycling is an anomaly. It is a team sport in which, with the exception of the team time
trial, a single person crosses the nish line to win and enjoy the plaudits on the podium.
But it is a sport that also covers hugely varied terrain – rolling hills, atlands,
mountainous ranges. The composition of a cycling team, therefore, is an exercise in
diversity. With diversity as an organising principle, there is a requirement to embrace a
range of different but complementary skill sets, determined in part by the team’s overall
objectives in the race. Is it chasing stage wins? The general classi cation? The climber’s
prize? The sprinter’s? It is a sport that, because of its very nature, is always raising the
question: Who leads?

In 2012, Team Sky entered a squad of nine riders: Christian Knees (GER), Richie Porte
(AUS), Chris Froome (GBR), Edvald Boasson Hagen (NOR), Bradley Wiggins (GBR), Mark
Cavendish (GBR), Bernhard Eisel (AUT), Michael Rogers (AUS) and Kanstantsin Siutsou
(BLR). The overall objective for the squad was to win the general classi cation, earning a
yellow jersey for Wiggins. His role as team leader was suggested overtly by his
positioning in the centre of publicity images.

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 Who leads?

However, this was a squad full of leaders. Standing next to Wiggins was Cavendish
adorned in the jersey of the reigning World Champion. Boasson Hagen would also wear
his national champion’s jersey during the race. Froome would follow in Wiggins’s
footsteps as a multiple stage-race winner in 2013. Porte too would go on to develop as a
general-classi cation contender. Something already achieved by his national compatriot
Rogers, who was a three-time world champion against the time-trial clock. Throughout
the Tour, as well as in many other races, Eisel would ful l the role of road captain.

Often, during the race, Sky could be seen at the front of the peloton with Wiggins, in the
race leader’s jersey, protected both in front and behind by his teammates. But who was
leading at such times? Was it Knees who was at the front of the peloton, taking the wind,
punching a hole through the air, clearing the way for others to follow? Or Eisel who had
organised his teammates into this protective pace line? Or Cavendish, who also was
sheltered, waiting to compete for the sprint stage win later in the day, the last wagon on
a runaway sprint train?

The organisation of a sprint train is an art form that illustrates the notion of rotating
leadership. It is executed at high speed, in complex conditions, surrounded by other
riders, variable weather, huge crowds and road furniture. The members of a team ride in
formation, wheel-to-wheel. They are streamlined for air resistance and maximum
velocity. One-by-one they assume leadership of the train, until nally the sprinter is
alone, launching themselves towards the nish line, uncoupling themselves from the
pilot sh instincts of their lead-out man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em7E4kstIss

This video, from the 2015 Tour of Dubai, captures the work of Cavendish’s new team
Etixx-QuickStep. It is also well worth searching online for footage of stage 21 of the
2009 Tour de France, which illustrates the decision-making and lead-out work of
Cavendish’s Team Columbia-HTC teammates George Hincapie and Mark Renshaw.

To answer the question Who leads?, one has to understand the importance of trust,
autonomy and context. It is as relevant in the encampments of Occupy as it is on the
roads of the Grand Tours, the corridors of government and the open spaces of the
modern workplace.

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The apprentice’s craft

For all the innovations and dominance of different materials in their manufacture, the
shape of the racing bicycle frame has remained remarkably consistent since the latter
years of the 19th century. The road bike diamond is familiar to all, regardless of whether
you express an interest in the sport or not. The production of these frames transcends the
hazy line that separates bespoke artisanship and craft from large-scale industrial output.
Indeed, just as professional cycling is inextricably connected to the evolution of mass
media from the late Victorian period onwards, so too does the history of the bicycle in
the same period re ect in microcosm shifting attitudes towards industry and craft. The
revival of interest in cycling and the emergence of the maker movement has prompted
increasing curiosity about the skills of the master framebuilder.

In Open, David Price observes that ‘Ef ciency, standardisation, elimination of waste,
were key drivers in the shift from craft production to mass production.’ Bicycle
manufacture was no exception. Early on, craftsmen had mastered the manipulation of
steel tubing, shaping it into attractive frames with ornate lugs. However, the incessant
search for lighter, cheaper, stiffer and stronger parts and frames, particularly in
professional cycling, led to experimentation with other materials too, including titanium,
aluminium and carbon. The development of carbon moulds, as well as alternative
methods for manipulating carbon- bre-reinforced polymers, opened the way for
outsourced mass production in Asian factories. Designed in Italy. Made in Taiwan. The
names of famous brands plastered over uniform products lacking any idiosyncrasies.

Off-the-shelf bicycles ooded the market to suit all riding styles, body shapes and sizes,
not to mention wallets. But they lacked the personal touch. It was at the fringes of
cycling culture, among the messenger community, for example, and the xed-wheel
enthusiasts, that something a bit more distinctive could be seen. Famous old marques
and steel steeds were dusted off and repurposed. Artisans of the past were sought out,
their knowledge and craft highly valued again. Steel and titanium frames offered
romanticised memories of things past, a different feel on the road, a ride that appealed
to those less interested in haste. Measurement here related not so much to speed,
distance covered, calories burned and heartbeat, as to bespoke t for your own body. In
his It’s All About the Bike – and Ride of My Life, the documentary lm that complements
it – Rob Penn enthusiastically describes the experience of having crafted for you, by an
experienced artisan, a frame that ts you like a glove. Bella Bathurst, in her The Bicycle
Book, goes further still, describing the experience of making your own frame under the

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watchful eye of a master framebuilder. The journey to knowledge mastery starts with
both conversation and action.

It is intriguing to see how the professional cycling teams have carried over the notion of
the master–apprentice relationship into the sport itself and not just in its supply chain. In
peloton formations there is always a uidity of leadership, roles and responsibilities that
is governed by context. The passage of time comes into play too. For example, many
successful professional cyclists at career’s end as practitioners on the road move into
advisory or management roles off it, serving as sporting directors, coaches and mentors.
At the other extreme is the space created for promising, young amateur riders towards
the end of each professional cycling season. Stagiaires are given the chance to gain
experience competing in professional races as short-term members of established teams.
This gives both the rider and the team the opportunity to assess readiness, attitude,
aptitude and team t. It is an immersive learning experience, where callow youth rubs
shoulders with and performs alongside seasoned veterans of the road racing circuit. For
some it is the launching pad to a successful career. Mark Cavendish, for example, was a
stagiaire with the T-Mobile Team in 2006, having spent time in one of their feeder
squads. The following year he was riding his rst Tour de France with the same team.

The novice is exposed to the knowledge and expertise not only of the master but of the
colleagues with whom the master interacts. Skills are acquired through observation,
imitation, enquiry, internalisation, deed and subsequent repetition. It happens in the
cycling team with the annual introduction of new team members and constant access to
veterans of the sport. It happened in the medieval monasteries, as suggested by The
Name of the Rose; Adso learning not only in the moment alongside Brother William, but
years after the fact as he re ects back on past events and lters them through decades of
subsequent experience. It happened with the blacksmiths, bakers, cobblers and masons
of old too. It happens still on a daily basis, in workplaces large and small, in both the
of ce lled with knowledge workers and the artisan’s workshop occupied by the few. It
is personal knowledge mastery made manifest. A perpetual exercise in curiosity,
acquisition and application of learning. Both master and apprentice continuing to learn
together.

Where recognition and reward for one’s expertise is the end goal, there is always the
danger of stagnation. An organisation comprised only of a team of deep specialists is not
unlike a bank of elevators, separated from one another, loosely serving a common
purpose but only occasionally pulling in the same direction. The tendency towards
hyperspecialisation fosters a blinkered perspective. The knowledge and personal

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experience of the individual gradually becomes valued above all else, curiosity fades,
self-promotion escalates, expertise loses its currency and evolves into empty rhetoric
without foundation in the market it is intended to serve. The craftsman as the
incomplete, always evolving learner is a useful countermeasure to this. By remaining
open to new ideas – including those introduced by their own youthful apprentices – the
craftsman allows themselves to blend new knowledge with traditional practices, to
experiment and tinker at the edges.

Some of the great innovations in cycling equipment, including the quick-release wheel,
have resulted from such Trojan Mice initiatives. So too some of the nutritional and
training practices adopted by cycling teams open to the in uence of newcomers
experienced in other disciplines. Many of the great masters of painting have also shown
themselves to be receptive to new in uences and ideas. Picasso’s career, for example, is
one marked by many sudden deviations and experiments in form and style, co-opting
and personalising, cycling constantly between the role of master and apprentice. Maybe
what our modern of ces need are a few more neo-generalists, who can both span as
well as mine specialisms, an injection of artisanship and a greater emphasis on learning
while doing.

It is a rewarding, stretching venture. The quest for a mastery that can never quite be
attained. What Harold Jarche calls life in perpetual beta.

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July 2013. Stage 9 of the Tour de France is under way. It is a challenging, mountainous
stage from Saint-Girons to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, taking in a number of Pyrenéen cols.
Chris Froome is already in the leader’s yellow jersey, and Team Sky’s role is to protect
and consolidate his lead. Teammate Richie Porte is second on the general classi cation
at the start of the day. But lurking behind them are a number of dangerous riders,
including Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana from Movistar, Bauke Mollema and
Laurens Ten Dam from Belkin Pro Cycling, and Alberto Contador and Roman Kreuziger
from Saxo-Tinkoff. Team Sky, who put in a dominant mountain display the previous day
on stage 8, are about to be seriously tested, prompting Froome at day’s end to observe
that it has been one of the hardest days he has ever experienced on a bike.

Teams enter stage races with different goals. Some target overall victory, others solo or
team time trials. Some are sprint specialists, while others are on the look out for
opportunistic stage victories, putting riders into breakaways. Choices are determined by
the composition of their teams, the route chosen by the race organisers, the weather
conditions on certain days, the health of riders during the course of the race, and,
naturally, race plans devised by the backroom team in collaboration with the cyclists. A
well-documented example of the latter, covered in Rod Ellingworth’s book, Project
Rainbow, is the extensive planning the British Cycling team put into the winning the
Men’s UCI Road World Championships in Copenhagen in 2011. Stage 9 of the 2013
Tour was to see a different example of unconventional ideas getting beautifully executed
by a team.

Dan Martin of Garmin Sharp lies in thirteen place on the general classi cation at the
start of the day’s stage, some 2 minutes 48 seconds behind Froome. He has lost most of
that time on the previous day’s stage as Froome and his Team Sky colleagues delivered a
tour de force securing victory atop Ax 3 Domaines. Martin’s team has narrowly missed
out on securing the leader’s yellow jersey on the opening stage of the Tour. They have
also failed to achieve one of their pre-race objectives: winning the team time trial on
stage 4. Their focus now shifts to a more disruptive, high-risk goal. Operating within a
loose framework, informed by data analysis, but with decision-making delegated to the
directeur sportif in the team car, as well as the riders on the road, they opt to do away
with cycling tradition and attack the race as a collective.

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This is a challenge to the status quo; change agency in action. As a team, in only the
ninth stage of a 21-stage event, they are prepared to sacri ce riders and harm their
chances of placing well in the overall race. Instead they adopt an all-or-nothing strategy,
placing their trust in Martin, their designated leader and protected rider for the day. As
the peloton climbs one col after another, the Garmin Sharp team attacks in waves, until
Martin recognises an opportunity and launches an attack of his own. Even then, having
traversed 169km and climbed ve categorised cols, he will still need to beat Jakob
Fuglsang (Astana) in a two-up sprint nish into Bagnères-de-Bigorre. By the end of the
day Martin has raced into the top ten on the general classi cation. In the process, while
not dislodging Froome from the race lead, Martin and his colleagues have exposed Team
Sky’s vulnerabilities. Porte’s chances of nishing on the podium now lie in tatters.

Martin’s victory, though, is not so much the product of team tactics, as of a number of
interdependent factors that favoured them on the day. Certainly team spirit and common
purpose are both features, as are Martin’s own intuition, decision-making and athletic
capability. But so too are the route chosen for the stage, the favourable weather
conditions, the temporary dip in form of the Sky team, the concerted effort of other
teams, especially Movistar, to take the race to Team Sky, and the early isolation of
Froome himself. Serendipity and luck play their role too. These are not things you can
plan for. Indeed, the racing aggression and risk taking displayed by Garmin Sharp and
Movistar, in comparison with Team Sky’s more conservative approach on the day,
illustrate the misguidedness of conventional planning. As Ian Sanders and David Sloly
argue in Mash-up!, ‘Most plans are rubbish, written by people who are guessing the
future based on what has happened in the past. The past is exactly that, the past; it has
gone, and even though it has a habit of repeating it can’t be used as an absolute map for
the future.’

Grand Tour bike races are great examples of the interconnectedness of multiple systems.
That applies within the context of the race itself and the actions of the cyclists, as
demonstrated by Martin and his fellow members of the peloton. More broadly, it also
applies to the organisation of the races and their impact on the numerous communities
that host the start and nish of each stage, as well as those that lie on the day’s route.
This was really brought home to me yesterday as I stood by the roadside next to
London’s Olympic Park as stage 3 of the 2014 edition of the Tour came to town.
Everywhere was evidence of the Tour organisers’ collaboration with British counterparts.
Different bodies had been mobilised, including Transport for London, the British police
force and the French gendarmerie. Roads were closed. Crowds controlled. The media
itted in and out of the race on motorbikes or hovered above it in helicopters. The

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cyclists were preceded by the commercial excesses and blaring Euro pop of the Tour
caravan, as well as by VIP vehicles, press cars and police outriders. Then in among the
cyclists and bringing up the rear were race of cials, team cars, cameramen. It was uid,
chaotic, agile and speedy. Elsewhere team coaches and other vehicles carrying support
staff, chefs, soigneurs and mechanics were heading into central London. Yet other
systems came into play too, not least the weather, which turned from sunshine to rain as
the riders headed towards the nish line on the Mall.

Cycling history is littered with stories of the impact of inclement weather, notably, in
recent memory, the snow-affected Milan-San Remo race of 2013. Then there is the rogue
or simply vacant element in the roadside crowds, such as the tack droppers who
attempted to sabotage the 2012 Tour and the sel e-photographers that lined the
Yorkshire roads in 2014. There are also numerous tales of the role railway level crossings
have played in proceedings, holding cyclists up as others, who managed to get over the
crossings before the barriers came down, race away to victory. It is a sport that
demonstrates that everything connects. A sport steeped in and interwoven with politics
and media throughout its history, with both the Tour and the Giro d’Italia originally
conceived to sell newspapers.

It is this very interconnectedness, this interplay of multiple systems, that reinforces my

belief in the peloton formation as an apt metaphor for a modern, agile, adaptive and
responsive organisation. One that has to operate under loose frameworks, tolerating risk,
constrained by Government and regulatory policy, responding to shifting market
conditions, seeking to evolve, transform, succeed, survive.

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On 4 July 2009, as a belated 40th birthday present, I visited the Tour de France for the
rst time. This consolidated a fascination with the professional sport that had been
further piqued in April by standing at the roadside (and then in the velodrome) for that
year’s edition of the one-day classic Paris-Roubaix. As I walked the streets alongside
Monaco’s Port Hercules and up into Monte Carlo in oppressive heat and cloying
humidity, I watched riders from the different trade teams warm up and inspect the course
for the time trial that would launch the great event. Proximity to the athletes and support
staff, together with the atmosphere and anticipation among the fans, was a heady mix. I
was smitten.

Elsewhere in Monaco the latest pages in the rst chapter of another story were being
written. This was one that would buttress and intertwine with my appreciation of
professional cycling and my borrowing from it for the notion of peloton formations and
the exploration of responsive, adaptive organisations. Behind the scenes the then
performance director of British Cycling, Dave Brailsford, was in negotiations to establish
a new professional men’s road racing team for the following season: Team Sky.
Everything about the team, from its initial launch, its openness to and advocacy of new
practices, its bucking of tradition, have tended to divide opinion since its black-clad
riders rst appeared in the peloton during the 2010 season. For some, Team Sky is
viewed as an interloper, an undesired change agent. Its failures are celebrated just as
vociferously in certain quarters as its successes are lauded in others.

Of course, there is no right answer. The story of Team Sky is a story of both/and not
either/or. Sky serves as a bridge from the past to the present: a new team combining
youth and experience; clean riders and a backroom team tainted in part by cycling’s
doping past; established professional racing practices blended with new techniques
related to training (of both body and mind), performance assessment, nutrition, an
individual’s race schedule, clothing, sleeping habits, adoption of information technology
and use of big data. You can walk around the story of Team Sky over the past ve years
and constantly reframe, adopt a different perspective, nd an angle that suits either
diatribe or eulogy. There is evidence of naivety and misplaced con dence just as there
are many examples of innovation and unprecedented success. It is the story of a start-up
taking on and then rapidly becoming part of the establishment. No different, really, than
the story of a Google or a Facebook.

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One of the factors that informs the culture and operation of Team Sky is the notion of
continuous improvement. Brailsford has absorbed ideas from kaizen and from other
sports, notably Manchester United’s treble in 1999, England’s success at the 2003 rugby
world cup and the Oakland Athletics’ Moneyball story in baseball. He has coined the
phrase ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’, which is all about making in nitesimal
improvements across a broad range of things rather than a huge advance in a single
thing. It echoes Clive Woodward’s argument that success often is ‘not about doing one
thing 100% better, but about doing 100 things 1% better’. As Daniel Friebe argues in his
article 'Cyclonomics', Brailsford’s fascination with Moneyball re ects a shared interest
in data and what can be learned from it. It proved to be a contributing factor in an
unprecedented run of Olympic and World Championship success for British track
cycling under his leadership. Lessons learned also were adapted for and absorbed by his
road cycling programmes too, rst with the British Cycling Academy and then with Team
Sky. It eventually led to close partnerships with the likes of Matt Parker and Tim Kerrison,
the latter one of the architects of Tour de France triumphs for both Bradley Wiggins in
2012 and Chris Froome in 2013.

Like many sports, cycling has always been one lled with data and statistics. It includes
time measurements within each stage, aggregated time assessed over stage races, and
points systems for certain jerseys. More recently, a rolling points system has been
established by the UCI, the sport’s governing body, that assigns a quanti ed value to
individual riders and can impact on the licensing of the trade teams for which they ride
as well as the size of their national teams at competitive events. It is a sport in which
numbers matter. As with any workplace, performance assessment is in place and it can
affect individual, as well as team, behaviour. Brailsford appears to have introduced
another dimension too, which others have been quick to copy. For example, the
biological passports and long-term performance data of athletes were assessed prior to
some of the early signings for Team Sky. With Kerrison in place now, the collection and
assessment of training data is constant too, as the team seeks to understand where an
athlete’s tolerance threshold is, helping them determine the correct pace for climbing a
given mountain or closing the gap to a breakaway. Some of the riders now seem to nd
it dif cult to tear their eyes away from their power meters as they hit the peaks of the
grand tours.

A recent Guardian interview with Brailsford by Sean Ingle suggests that there is much
more to follow. Brailsford has spent time in Silicon Valley assessing new technologies
and how they might support rider performance and health, continuous improvement and
effective decision making. Sensors in clothing, for example, have the potential to provide

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a dashboard of rider health information, real-time data that can impact on who should
lead on a given day, who should attack the peloton and when, and so on. There is a
danger that the riding then becomes robotic, remote controlled from team cars. It is a
criticism already levelled, perhaps unfairly, at Team Sky and others in the peloton,
particularly in those races in which radio contact between riders and sporting directors
is permitted. It is a criticism that tends to ignore the level of autonomy the riders
themselves have. It is not all about numbers or radios.

There are many riders in the peloton who are not quanti ed serfs. Like the corporate
employees who rebel against the calibration process that accompanies the annual
review, there are prominent athletes like Mark Cavendish who mount a numeric
challenge. It is well known that Cavendish performs dreadfully on the static testing
equipment that generates assessment metrics. Thankfully, his abilities on the road, his
capabilities among the peloton and his strength of purpose were all recognised early in
his career and this overrode the story the numbers told. As a consequence space was
made for the quali ed self. One of the most successful careers in road cycling sprinting
followed. Numbers do lie. We should not always be in thrall to them. Brailsford himself
is one of the rst to observe that data or technology will not themselves give riders an
edge. It is the application of these things, their enabling potential, that matters together
with the athlete’s own talent, the mastery of their discipline, their decision making and
autonomy within the context of a loose framework.

This was brilliantly illustrated at the 2015 edition of the one-day race Omloop Het
Nieuwsblad. Another example where the story suggested by numbers was turned on its
head. Riding for Team Sky, Ian Stannard was the reigning champion from 2014. Through
smart riding and great awareness, he had managed to manoeuvre himself into the
decisive breakaway in the nal kilometres of the race. There was one problem, however:
a signi cant numeric disadvantage. The three other riders in the breakaway all belonged
to the same team, Etixx-QuickStep, specialists in the north European races over the
cobblestones. Among their number were Stijn Vandenbergh, Niki Terpstra, winner of the
2014 edition of Paris-Roubaix, and Tom Boonen a serial winner of one-day classics and
one of the most successful cobblestone riders of the past decade. This, however, was a
race without radios, the breakaway’s bubble punctured by occasional visits by team cars
to the front of the race. In other respects the riders were on their own and had to self-
organise. The Etixx decision making proved to be awed, and Stannard, through a
combination of his own skill, mental fortitude, physical strength and canniness was able
to outwit his companions and win the event. It was a demonstration of talent and

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autonomy. Evidence that the riders selected to represent the team will always outweigh
any interest in data or technology. People rst. Always.

After a far-from-perfect season in 2014, Team Sky’s dual emphasis on both its people and
its drive for continuous improvement is already bearing substantial fruit, of which
Stannard’s solo efforts are just one example. Elsewhere Chris Froome and his teammates
overcame the challenge of Alberto Contador to win the Ruta del Sol, Geraint Thomas
claimed overall victory in the Volta ao Algarve stage race and Richie Porte prevailed after
eight days of Paris-Nice. Cycling is a team sport where individuals win, one person
stepping onto a podium representing the networked efforts of teammates on the road
and the support team of directors, coaches, chefs, psychologists and data analysts which
orbit them. The marginal gains have effectively blended training methods, professional
mastery across a spectrum of disciplines, a balance between quality and quanti cation,
planning within broad frameworks, the adoption and application of appropriate
technology, and trust placed in the ability and decision making of the athletes on the
bikes.

So, what counts? Certainly not just the numbers. As with the operation of any
organisation, from small-scale cycling team to huge corporation, the people matter
above all else. They ourish in the right environment, with a supportive culture, enabling
technology, common purpose, freedom to express their professional mastery, and
autonomy to respond and adapt to context. Cycling is a fascinating mix of human
endeavour, mechanisation and technological advancement. The way each element is
harnessed to achieve objectives is crucial to the concept of peloton formations and its
broader application to business.

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This article was rst published on the the Hack & Craft News website in November
2016.

Sunday 11 September 2016. A diminutive professional road cyclist, Nairo Quintana,

takes his place on the top step of the podium in the centre of Madrid. He has just
secured overall victory in a Grand Tour race for the second time in his career. But things
could have turned out so differently were it not for the spirit of adventure that Quintana
and his teammates had demonstrated the previous Sunday…

Peloton formations

For all the focus on the individual, winning unique stages, overall races, classi cation
jerseys and intermediate sprints, road racing is in fact a team event. It is played out
against a backdrop of numerous interacting systems – competing teams, event
organisation, municipal authorities for the host towns, policing, media embedded within
the race, team cars, support vehicles, spectators on the roadside, weather, terrain, course
routes and road furniture. The passage of the cycling peloton itself – that swarming mass
of lycra-clad teammates and competitors – is complex and adaptive. The peloton
formation, in its responsiveness and uidity, serves as a useful metaphor for an
aspirational modern organisation.

The peloton is characterised by constant shifts between competition, collaboration and

cooperation. Leadership is always in motion rather than remaining static, a baton that is
passed off and handed back again, determined by day-to-day and overall objectives for
the team. Leaders become followers, servants become leaders, as the road attens or
climbs, as the wind strengthens or tarmac gives way to cobblestones. Emphasis is placed
on time-bound actions and relationships; forming or chasing down a breakaway, setting
up a sprint nish, helping a teammate make their way back to the main group after a
mechanical failure.

Alliances of mutual convenience take shape and then shatter as competitors

accommodate contextual shifts. Teams operate within loose frameworks, exercising

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personal and collective autonomy, as they amend their plans. Decisions are made on the
y, in recognition of changes in weather, incidents on the road, the health and form of
colleagues, as well as in response to the actions of riders from other teams. The roles an
individual ful ls are in a constant state of ux.

Members of a nine-man Grand Tour team, assembled for the annual editions of the
three-week Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España, will assume a variety of
responsibilities. Some will defend against breakaway attempts. Others will collect water
bottles from the team cars. Some will shelter the day’s designated leader from the wind,
while that leader will aim to conserve energy for the nal sprint or climb, or for key
stages later in the week. All, though, are alert to opportunities to break free from the
peloton’s grip and enjoy a day in front of the television cameras. For several teams,
lacking the personnel for overall victory, exposing your corporate sponsor’s logo to a
global audience is the ultimate objective. Brand awareness leads to revenue; a sponsor’s
income can translate into ongoing nancial viability for the team.

Serial masters

An effective road racer, with aspirations to win a Grand Tour, tends to master several
disciplines. Invariably, they are extremely competent climbers, often to be seen at the
front of the race as it reaches its highest slopes. Often they are highly pro cient against
the time trial clock too, the ultimate test in performance measurement. The very best are
also characterised by their inner strength, their responsiveness and occasional
opportunism.

Being serial masters, the Grand Tour contenders seem better able to play what is in front
of them, rewriting the day’s plans when necessary, gambling where they believe the
calculated reward will outweigh the potential risk. Without that mastery and
responsiveness, it is dif cult to adapt to and rectify major problems. Even more so to
take advantage of the serendipitous opportunity. Individual initiative will often be
ampli ed and consolidated by the supporting actions of teammates.

At the start of the 2016 Tour de France, three riders were considered potential winners:
Chris Froome, Nairo Quintana and Alberto Contador. This was founded in part on their
own form and palmarès and, in particular, on the collective abilities of their respective

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Sky, Movistar and Tinkoff teams. It was expected that the big three would mark each
other closely, with only injury, illness or individual opportunism likely to differentiate
before their rivalry was played out on the most vertiginous of the Tour’s ascents.

As things transpired, all three came into play. Contador succumbed to the effects of
crashes early in the race, while Quintana’s own performance was inhibited throughout
by illness. This was exacerbated by Froome’s willingness to do the unexpected; to go
against the unfair stereotype he bears of being a robotic rider in thrall to the data
available on his cycling computer and the instructions received from sporting directors
through his earpiece.

Froome is renowned for his sudden accelerations on the Pyrenean and Alpine climbs.
Rival teams watch closely, preparing to respond, either accompanying him as he breaks
away from the peloton, or neutralising his efforts. On stage 8 of the Tour, there was some
relief as the summit of the Col de Peyresourde was attained with the leading group
intact.

As Quintana reached for his water bottle, however, Froome attacked as the road dropped
downhill, assuming an ungainly and uncomfortable position on the crossbar of his road
bike. It proved to be a turning point in the race, laying the foundations for Froome’s
overall victory, expertly marshalled and supported by his teammates over the remaining
thirteen stages.

Seize the day

At the start of the Vuelta a España in mid-August, the names of the same three
contenders for overall victory were on everyone’s lips. New variables were in play. How
well had Contador recovered from his injuries, Quintana from illness, Froome from his
efforts at both the Tour and the Olympics, where he had medalled in the time trial event?
How would the apparently weaker Tinkoff and Sky teams respond to the collective
strength of the Movistar squad? How would Froome cope without his Tour wingman
Wout Poels?

In recent editions, the Vuelta has become known for its challenging climbs and searing
heat. The 2016 race had been designed with several mountain-top nishes that would

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serve as enticing canvases for the climbing artists. One stage, though, stood out in the
nal week: an individual time trial, which many believed favoured Froome. If other
aspirants to overall victory wished to take the sting out of that particular day, then they
would need to accumulate a signi cant time advantage.

In the Vuelta, time can be gained in two ways. First, by nishing ahead of your
competitors, thereby securing a time gap over them. Second, by winning the stage or
nishing high up on it, particularly on the more dif cult climbs, thereby earning time
bonuses. The rider who has the lowest overall time after three weeks is declared the
winner of the race.

Teamwork becomes essential, therefore, as members of a squad sacri ce their own

prospects of nishing high up on the general classi cation in order to ensure that a
colleague does. Trust-based relationships and collaboration informed by a shared
purpose de ne the dynamics of the team. Often, however, there is a need for this to be
supplemented by cooperation with riders from rival teams. These temporary alliances are
mutually convenient as the pursuit of distinct goals are bene ted by working together.

The Vuelta started with a team time trial, which immediately disadvantaged Contador, as
his underperforming team lost time to the other overall contenders. This recast him in the
role of agitator, of opportunistic forager, seeking out ways to regain time and a spot on
the podium, if not overall victory. His actions later in the race would bene t Quintana,
who soon established himself as the rider to watch on the steepest of slopes, assuming
race leadership by the midpoint of the Vuelta.

On paper, stage 15 looked like it would be short but explosive. Only 118km in length,
from Sabiñánigo to Aramon Formigal, it had a lumpy pro le, with three classi ed
climbs, culminating in a mountain-top nish. With 112km still to race, and the peloton
already on the rst of the day’s ramps, Contador made the jump. His attack was marked
by Quintana, and together they formed an alliance, each with two teammates alongside
them, as they pulled away as part of the day’s breakaway. A gamble was rapidly
translated into a race-transforming opportunity.

Froome was left behind, and as the day progressed found himself isolated without
teammates from Sky. Meanwhile, Quintana’s own Movistar colleagues expertly disrupted
attempts to chase down the breakaway. The events of the day were as much about
Quintana’s own seizing of it as the work of his team behind him. Second place on the
stage, a time bonus and Froome’s loss of over two-and-a-half minutes secured the

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temporal buffer Quintana required prior to the time trial. Froome’s phenomenal
performance in the latter suggested what might have been, with the Sky rider clawing
back two-and-a-quarter minutes from Quintana. But the latter and his Movistar team had
effectively won the race on 4 September.

Peloton lessons

Stories from the peloton frequently demonstrate that it is about so much more than the
individual. Network effects are key, both within the clearly delimited organisation of the
team, and in the messier relationships and alliances with others in the peloton. The
technical policies, rules and regulations of governing bodies and event organisers give a
semblance of structure to the races. But the teams use them as creative constraints,
operating more under exible frameworks than rigid plans. Without responsiveness and
autonomy, without the willingness to experiment, these teams would experience little
success, letting one opportunity after another pass them by.

Paradoxically, life in the peloton is about both preparing and being willing to discard a
plan at a moment’s notice. It is what Harold Jarche refers to as life in perpetual beta.
Complexity cannot be dealt with in simplistic terms, uncertainty is a constant, and
individuals have to be willing to respond to momentary context and trust their
colleagues to follow their lead. How many organisations in the private, public and not-
for-pro t sectors do you know that operate like this?

Pelotons are able to function in the way that they do because learning and experience is
embedded within them. Young riders are mentored by seasoned professionals. They learn
through imitation, trial and error, developing both instinct and intuition, daring to
experiment when the occasion presents itself. The sport is all about life lessons acquired
on the road, the knowledge gained from numerous failures as relevant as that acquired
through the occasional success. Teamwork provides rm foundations. But autonomy
within loose frameworks, decision-making and accountability are all encouraged from
early on. It is this crucial combination – individual action contextualised in relation to
the collective – that the modern corporation, government agency and charity now need
to learn.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5yQypJM5w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtiaGZtRfbM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPvOmklWZLs

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About the author

Richard Martin is a freelance writer and editor.

richardmartinwriter.com
richardmartin@duck.com

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